Tonight at 8.15pm, let’s hook up for a virtual champagne as my Offspring character, Rosanna Harding, makes her TV acting and singing debut (Channel 10 – Australia).

In this episode, you’ll hear Rosanna sing a snippet of a song I wrote especially for Offspring, called “You Make Me Happy” (noticing a theme?).

As usual, I wanted you to hear it first – it won’t be on sale until May 25th, but I’ve posted on my Facebook page : I’d love you to listen, leave a comment, and if you love it, please do me the honour of sharing the link with your friends far and wide (this would make ME happy!).

Might see you later tonight,

Clare xoxo

Long time no see! Rest assured, you’ve been on my mind. A LOT.

And you know how I love giving presents? There’s one hiding in here for you (as well as a VERY interesting invitation, down the bottom).

But first: I’m the kind of gal who likes the chance to say a “proper goodbye”, you know? Are you the same?

If so, please join me in saying “Adios, old friend!” to the season that gave us Modern Day Addiction. In case you never heard it, MDA was a gutsy, critically acclaimed, award-winning, freaking unique Top Ten album that almost killed me to make (it’s THAT good): add it to your collection here .

Time also to bid farewell to our amazing MDA website, with all it’s projects and photos and open letters and resources and fun and games. See ya old buddy. It’s been swell.

In the spirit of proper goodbyes, I’ve made you a little something: it’s an extremely raw and big old EMOTIONAL and never before seen film-clip, which I recorded with the Lady Garden (Aluka). It’s a song about a heart-breaking goodbye that needed to happen.

Since then, my hair has grown, and so has my heart, but it’s a work in progress, and this work has been the making of my fifth album (due out in a coupla months).

I hope you LOVE the clip, share it with your friends, and tell us what you think of it on Facebook  – I’ll be hanging out there quite a bit this month!

Big Love,
CB xoxo

Important PS! OOH OOH!

I’ve been coaching and mentoring creative-types since 2003, when I first ran a music-business course at my local community house. I do this for free publicly (see below), and I also get paid HANDSOMLY to do it privately (although I’m currently booked out until November 2012 – join the waiting list by emailing mentoring@storybaker.com).

Later this year, I’ll begin using my website to share everything I know about how to make your living by doing the thing you love (and why this makes the world a far better place too!).

If you have any specific questions you’d like answered related to any aspect at all of running a creative business (from “How do I juggle a family and a creative life?” to “How much should I be charging for my gigs?”) please email them to us viaadmin@storybaker.com with the title “Question for Clare”.  Perhaps yours will be the one we choose to feature on our website! xoxo

UPCOMING

Clare Bowditch and John Watson seminar: ‘Re-learning your Gig’
Victoria University Melbourne, Australia
Monday, May 14, 2012 at 7:30PM Tickets: http://bnds.in/KEpiPn

Clare Bowditch opens up to Michael Lallo about suffering, joy, the death of her sister and the love of her life.

In the summer of 1985, Clare Bowditch shed half her weight and grew several inches. At first, her primary-school classmates didn’t recognise her. A few weeks later, she was approached by a friend’s mother. ”I had no idea you were beautiful,” the woman told Bowditch, who was 10 at the time. ”How did you do it?”

Bowditch explained that her doctor had recommended a diet. ”Can you photocopy it for me?” the woman asked. Other mothers also sought her advice, gushing over her newly trim figure. ”It just freaked me out,” Bowditch says. ”The first thing I did was start overeating again.”

Instead of bitterness, she has empathy for those women, viewing their behaviour as symptoms of an image-obsessed culture. As she argued on her acclaimed 2010 album Modern Day Addiction, advertisers don’t sell products – they sell insecurity. They make us feel physically inadequate, then proffer their ”improvements”. They equate good parenting with antibacterial kitchen sprays. They imply that popularity is just one celebrity-endorsed fragrance away. As Bowditch puts it, ”We all have this mad monkey in our brain that’s constantly saying, ‘You are not enough; you should be more like this.”’

Clare Bowditch finds joy in not sweating the small stuff.

Clare Bowditch opens up to Michael Lallo about suffering, joy, the death of her sister and the love of her life.

In the summer of 1985, Clare Bowditch shed half her weight and grew several inches. At first, her primary-school classmates didn’t recognise her. A few weeks later, she was approached by a friend’s mother. ”I had no idea you were beautiful,” the woman told Bowditch, who was 10 at the time. ”How did you do it?”

Bowditch explained that her doctor had recommended a diet. ”Can you photocopy it for me?” the woman asked. Other mothers also sought her advice, gushing over her newly trim figure. ”It just freaked me out,” Bowditch says. ”The first thing I did was start overeating again.”

Instead of bitterness, she has empathy for those women, viewing their behaviour as symptoms of an image-obsessed culture. As she argued on her acclaimed 2010 album Modern Day Addiction, advertisers don’t sell products – they sell insecurity. They make us feel physically inadequate, then proffer their ”improvements”. They equate good parenting with antibacterial kitchen sprays. They imply that popularity is just one celebrity-endorsed fragrance away. As Bowditch puts it, ”We all have this mad monkey in our brain that’s constantly saying, ‘You are not enough; you should be more like this.”’

Bowditch in Offspring, with Eddie Perfect.

Of course, we expect such social critiques from our musicians. This is what artists do: they spotlight society’s failings, articulate our pain and console us with their insights. Suffering is their stock in trade. Often, we romanticise their crises and breakdowns as the inevitable cost of a creative disposition.

But Bowditch isn’t so sure.

”I consciously decided to write something that wouldn’t sink me,” she says of her as-yet-untitled new album, to be released in August. ”I’ve always drawn from the pool of suffering for my art, but sometimes you can get trapped by that. And I don’t want to become a cynical person. I don’t think artists are born to be miserable.”

We’re in the lounge of her rambling weatherboard home, me on the couch and she on the floor, recovering from a painful back injury. It’s cold and wet and as the rain beats on the window she rolls onto her stomach and snuggles into her quilt. Her friend brings us mugs of peppermint tea, then we settle in to talk about the album’s themes: joy and sorrow, beauty and brokenness – and that most misunderstood of concepts, happiness.

Of course, just as we believe sorrow is the province of artists, some view ”happiness” as the domain of self-help authors and daytime-TV hosts, dismissing it as a cynical marketing tool – a collection of glib cliches aimed at the gullible masses. This, Bowditch admits, could lead to her album being greeted with suspicion in certain quarters. So could her coming role on Channel Ten’s Offspring, the excellent Melbourne-made drama that some overlook because it’s on a commercial network.

”With every album I do, I genuinely fear being cast out of the tribe,” she says. ”But I’ve had enough claps now. I don’t need a certain radio station to tell me that I’m OK.”

Except her ”happiness album” is not what you might think. ”It does not banish the sorrow,” she says. ”It’s not about slapping on the pink paint. It’s about seeing the ugliest wall in the building and saying, ‘Hmm, the world thinks this wall is broken? Well, I don’t. Let’s make a feature of this wall.’ People will make up their own minds but, to me, this album goes deeper and is more personal than the others. As a result, it’s more frightening and liberating.”

What about the curiously common belief that lifting oneself out of endless wallowing – with the aid of therapy, say – causes artistic inspiration to evaporate? ”No,” she says. ”I think if you’ve got it in your blood, it will always be there.”

Bowditch is living proof of this. Having tried various ”happiness projects” in the past two years, she’s lost none of the fire in her belly, none of her songwriting talents or passion for social justice. Quite the opposite, in fact: her work is now enriched by the insights these projects have given her.

One was her immersion in the science of neuroplasticity. As bestsellers such as The Brain That Changes Itself argue, our thoughts physically sculpt our brains, in turn changing our thoughts. This is why psychoanalysis and meditation – both essentially forms of neural microsurgery – can be so effective.

Paradoxically, this plasticity also fosters depression and rigid, self-defeating behaviours. The more we beat ourselves up, for instance, the more we condition our brains to do so in future.

”Still, I’m inspired by these findings,” Bowditch says. ”When we get stuck in a rut, we do have a choice.”

Herein lies the crux of her happiness project. She doesn’t have all the answers and knows she never will. There are no quick fixes, though something as simple as slowly brewing a pot of tea can be a ”shortcut to joy”. She will pursue the meaningful pleasures in life. She will try to accept the inevitable heartaches and sorrows.

It’s a long way from her nervous breakdown at 21. ”I did that classic thing of travelling to run away,” she says. ”But no matter where you go, there you are.” This realisation triggered six months of acute panic attacks.

Still, she kept searching for the next thing that would ”make” her happy: joining a band, switching boyfriends, critical acclaim. None did the trick but each time she’d try again.

Then she had a profound insight: the only thing she needed to change was her ”ridiculous preoccupation with finding an ongoing, easy place of ‘no pain”’. She realised she’d been chasing a fantasy, the myth that contentment was just around the corner in the form of the ”right” city, boyfriend or job. This revelation prompted her therapist to relabel her ”nervous breakdown” as a ”nervous breakthrough”.

About this time, she met her husband-to-be, musician Marty Brown. She found him to be ”lovely, kind and generous” – and thus kept him at bay for three years while she dated ”cowboy after cowboy”.

”When you’re young, you think that dating the guy who’s loving represents a kind of death,” she says. ”You think all the excitement of life will be gone; that you’ll be living in the beige suburbs with someone who is, god forbid, actually kind to you. I don’t know what kind of perversion was going on in my mind at the time, but I know it’s not an uncommon one.”

Having heard mutual friends speak of Bowditch and Brown’s relationship in awe, it’s surprising to hear it did not begin with fireworks. There’s no doubting their bond, though. When Brown strides in to say hello, they look at each other with the affection of a new couple.

”The luckiest thing in my life was having that moment of clarity with Marty,” she says after he leaves. ”He’s truly the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Even with three primary-school-aged children – daughter Asha and twin sons Eli and Oscar – they have a weekly ”date night”, recently moving it so they can watch Offspring on Wednesdays.

It is Bowditch’s first acting gig, in which she plays musician and single mother Rosanna, who forms a creative partnership with Eddie Perfect’s character, Mick. Her debut episode airs on May 16 and two songs from her coming album will feature this season.

”Themes of the album reflect what’s happening with Asher Keddie’s character, Nina,” she says. ”Very often, we get in our own way and that’s what you see with Nina. Happiness presents itself as a possibility and yet she’s constantly catastrophising. That’s something we all do, though. That’s why we love Nina.”

Perfectionism also colours many of Offspring’s storylines, and it’s something Bowditch struggled with for years.

But at the age of 36, she’s (mostly) let it go. And when someone asks her how she does it all, she gives a firm reply: ”I don’t do it all.”

”I don’t pressure myself to have a house that looks like a magazine,” she says. ”I don’t feel it’s my responsibility to look after my home and children alone; Marty and I do that together. I haven’t lost my baby weight and I don’t torture myself about it. And I never do anything perfectly.”

This is what she does instead: makes music, blogs, writes opinion pieces, reads philosophy and cultivates friendships. She turns off her phone and doesn’t feel guilty. She makes time for creative expression, knowing it makes her a better mother, partner and person. Most importantly, she indulges in the simple joys most of us are too busy to know we’re missing.

Last week, for instance, her son stomped into the kitchen with his underpants on his head, singing a song he’d made up about a dragon named Joe. She stopped and watched, focused and present, delighting in the moment.

A few years ago, Bowditch and Brown lived in a house with no back fence. None of their neighbours had one, either. In this space were a shared trampoline and sandpit, a clothes line, chickens and a mulberry tree. Each Sunday, these eight households gathered for dinner. Some of her fondest memories are from this time.

When she and Brown moved to ”the People’s Republic of Moreland”, they replicated this on a smaller scale by knocking a hole in their neighbour’s fence (with their permission, one assumes). Again, their kids can share trampolines and cubby houses.

Instead of shiny appliances and designer furniture, their home is dotted with toys, children’s shoes and sentimental items, such as a decorative red clog that reflects her mother’s Dutch heritage. The lounge has a wall of photos, including some of her late sister, Rowena. ”You can see her in that one, with all the family,” she says, pointing to a beaming toddler with a mop of strawberry curls.

Rowena died at age seven, from a rare illness similar to multiple sclerosis. Bowditch was five at the time. Occasionally, people ask how she ”got over” this loss.

”You get over it by not getting over it,” she says. ”I have her with me all the time. I just accept it as a great wound of love.

”When something like this happens to children, it can be both the source of our pain and our superpowers. It aches; it marks us for life. It created in me this need to work out why, to make sense of it all. Then there’s a gradual realisation that … well, there’s only a point of acceptance.”

Even as a child, Bowditch was struck by how the Catholic community rallied around her grieving family. It pains her, therefore, to feel she no longer has a place in the church.

”I’m just appalled by all the fighting over who marries who, who can love who,” she says. ”By how slow the church was to act on the mess of paedophilia. By how the Vatican told those nuns in the US, who were doing great work, to shut up and get back in their box.”

Articulate and confident, it’s hard to picture the teenage self she depicts, prone to describing her work as ”not songs but just pieces of shit, really”.

”People are so scared of not being good enough, they keep their first draft under their bed forever,” she says. ”No one tells you that when you start something, you’ll be shit at it for a while.” Now, when an aspiring songwriter asks her how to get started, she tells them: ”Just write the f—ing song.”

Despite her improvement, Bowditch says she writes ”10 shit songs for every average one, and three average songs for every good one”. This ratio has remained constant. What’s changed is that she no longer flagellates herself over the mediocre tunes.

”The trick is to just keep on creating,” she says. ”If you do, victory is nigh, whether the world recognises it or not.”

Offspring airs on Wednesdays at 8.30pm on Channel Ten.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/happy-days-20120505-1y5ku.html#ixzz1u9xsZeVY

The Victoria Institute invites you to ‘Re-learning your Gig’ the second free public seminar in the Controversies series

Guest speakers:

Clare Bowditch, Australian Musician
John Watson, Manager, John Watson Management & President,Eleven: A Music Company

Clare and John will reflect on maintaining a committment to learning, on-the-job training, and ways formal education prepared them (or not) for life in the music industry. There will also be an opportunity for guests to ask questions.

More info and register your attendance.

She is an ARIA award-winning singer but Clare Bowditch is about to make a move on to the small screen with a regular role on Offspring.

Playing opposite Asher Keddie and other cast members including Kat Stewart, Bowditch will appear as a single mum with a love for music who forms a friendship with Mick Holland (played by Eddie Perfect).

Bowditch says she auditioned once for the show after taking a ”random creative adventure” and taking on an entertainment manager, who urged her to give it a shot.

”I thought it would be good to get one [audition] under my belt – and just got lucky,” Bowditch says, with a laugh. ”I thought it was bullshit, I really did. I mean, as if that happens! I felt really, really fortunate, I really did.”

Her role worked so well it was extended. ”I went in expecting to work for a few days and it went on for some months,” she says.

Bowditch jokes that her previous acting experience is the sum total of zero, apart from playing Joseph in a school play. She admits the Offspring role is suited to her real-life personality.

”I’m very fortunate to be playing some of my own music. I’ve written songs for the show about the characters,” she says.

Bowditch, who is a mother of three (including twins), says she has always loved Offspring but had no idea of the hours involved in making it.

”I take my hat off to TV crews and actors; I had no idea they worked these kind of schedules, you know, the late nights and long hours, it’s just amazing – the work ethic. It’s putting musicians to shame all over Australia!”

Read more

Christine Sams Sydney Morning Herald

We recently read some sad news in the papers: that the company who put on Eva (Bold Jack) have gone into voluntary receivership. Just to be clear, none of the artists or management involved in Eva are in any way linked to Bold Jack itself – we just feel bad that things didn’t work out for everyone. Right now, we’re not sure when or whether the show will ever be put on again. We will let you know when we find out more.

Best,

CB HQ

I’m writing with unexpectedly exciting news, which leads to a splash of disappointing news, which ends with a free gift: my little way of saying  ”Forgive me, I love you, thank you!”.  I call it a Love Sandwich.

Here’s the announcement from my Management:

“Due to an exciting new TV commitment (YAY!) for the multi-award winning singer/songwriter Clare Bowditch, the return season of last year’s successful stage show  ‘EVA – The Story of Eva Cassidy has been postponed’.

Stay tuned for further news (Network announcement coming soon).

Ticket holders can contact Ticketek or ring the Athenaeum Theatre on 03 96501500 for more information”. 

I really am so sorry if I’ve caused disappointment here – that is my least favourite thing to do.

Please, enjoy this little gift: a free (and very rare) download of myself and Monique di Mattina doing a live version of Joni Mitchell’s River.

In other news, I’m now quite a bit of the way through creating my new album, which seems to want to position itself on the theme/big crazy-sexy-question of “happiness”. (Are you ready yet?) As with all things creative and new, I’m both terrified and exhilarated. Whatever happens, I promise, I will tell the truth. It’s due out later in the year sometime (why are musicians always so vague? Because we are servants to our muses!).

Marty just walked in, UTTERLY exhilarated after seeing Polly Jean Harvey (and Mick Harvey!) create a spot of genius on stage at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre. I will leave you now for my “blow by blow” account, and be back in touch soon with more news.

Big Love and thanks,

Clare xoxoxo

UPCOMING SHOWS

No shows booked at the moment.

For me, 2012 is looking like the year I explore the idea of big happiness, and where it hides, and doesn’t hide. Creative projects will no doubt ensure. As usual, I hope you’ll come along with me on this exploration. I feel lucky to have you still with me after all of these years!

You know those questions you asked me on the Winter Secrets tour, which you wrote on a piece of paper, and I gathered up and kept with me?

They were wonderful questions, but I discovered there were hundreds of them: I thought I’d just start with answers to this first 55 of them.

Some of these are very personal answers: I have been as honest as I can. Thank you for your curiosity, humour and thoughtfullness. (SCROLL DOWN TO READ)

Please enjoy this flashback, of me and Tex singing the Fairytale of New York.

I will write again in the new year.

Clare xoxox

PS – That offer for special discounted Eva tickets for my mailing-list will only last for a very limited time: and remember, this season sold out last time! click here for tix

PPS – If you’re stuck for presents, remember, you can always buy a World Vision Goat, or a Design Files Calendar, or one of those great books by Peggy Frew or Pip Lincoln or Kat Macleod or Marieke Hardy or Catherine Deveny or the Women of Letters, or you can make something out of twine and fig-leaves…really, it’s the thought that counts…

WINTER SECRETS

1. Did your cousin Lady Bowdo team learn dance moves at calisthenics too?

a. I wish I could answer this but to be honest, I really try not to talk with her that much about her “professional life”.

2. Every good parent sings songs to their kids to make them laugh and cheer them up. What is your favourite?

a. I sing them really cheesy songs about themselves, made up to suit the occasion, like “Oooh, who’s the little lady climbing up the tree? Why it’s YOU!” etc. Often I just match their mood, for example, if they’re grumpy, I sing a grumpy-faced song “If you’re grumpy and you know it, say I’m grumpy “YES I’m GRUMPY”. Jack Black is of great inspiration here .

3. Why do boyfriends buy silly cars?

a. Something to do with their willies. I think.

4. What is your biggest winter secret?

a. I already told you! Weren’t you there on the night?

5. How do you get your hair so luscious?

a. That’s nuts. I eat lots of nuts. Also, might have something to do with my Mother and Father. Not sure. I heard once that it’s good to rub olive oil on your hair. I’ve never tried it. Let me know how it goes?

6. How do you get such great curls? What brand of curling wand do you use?

a. Me? Oh yes, that was Leesa, my tour manager. She’s a professional hair-dresser, and carries a dozen curlers wherever she goes. Sorry, she wouldn’t tell me the brand. She is SO secretive about her beauty regime! Leesa!

7. What colour should I ask for when I want a Clare Bowditch-esque hair-do?

a. More about the hair! It changes a bit.

8. Where do you get your great complexion?

a. Thanks! I think that was called “Slapping it on thick, just like we’re sixteen”…

9. Where do you buy your clothes/dresses?

a. Many of my dresses are from a small but brilliant dress-making company called Lazybones, who I discovered in 2009. Some of them are from Boom Shankar. Many of them are old and from old-ish shops. There might even be a few from a fashion shop called K-mart. When I am dressing up, I like Easton Pearson, Mariana Hardwick, Leona Edminston and Akira. We live in fortunate times.

10. How many cats do you need to acquire before you can officially become an old lonely cat lady?

a. Look, the official line is “more than two”. One of my favourite Canadian artists, Emily Carr, was a true cat lady. She would ride them around in prams and stuff. I love people who truly commit to their eccentricity, you know?

11. How can I get my wife to play drums nude?

a. What a lovely compliment to your wife! Just ask her nicely.

12. I am working 9-5, have a teenage daughter, on my ‘own’ with four cats and my gorgeous girl – full of creative ideas but have so little time plus money to do much with my urges, but feeling unfulfilled. Any ideas? Inspirations? You inspire me.

a. Thank you – you inspire me too because that’s a whole lot of creatures you take care of! I completely and utterly understand your question, because it’s something I too struggle with. What I have found, however, is that if I want a happy family, if I want a happy life actually, I need to eek out a tiny weeny pocket of time to just sit and do something I love, every single day. EVERY SINGLE DAY! I am this kind of person – I do need time on my own, or I start talking in a Gollum voice. This was a true challenge when my children were very small: three to seven minutes with a cup of tea, some pen and paper…most days, that’s as much as I got. My children are almost all at school, so now I find I can get a whole hour, and sometimes, when someone is helping out, or the babes are happily occupied, I get whole hours in a row. A book that helped me was one that my friend Rachel Power wrote: it’s called “The Divided Heart”. I was one of the subjects of the book, and yet when I read it I felt so relieved to hear that other artists/mothers also struggled and had found differing levels of acceptance with the feeling that they couldn’t live out their creative lives in the way they wanted, whenever they wanted. There is some kind of poetry in this though, and it can be a bit of what Jack Kornfield calls “A path with heart”.

Some years are easier than others, so as artists, we are wise to always have a long-term view. Also, we are wise to really work hard to find space for our creative spirits, knowing that in the long-term, this will serve us well. For me, I “work hard” by getting up really early, sometimes as early as 5am, just to have that hour to myself. I am a better mother and lover and friend and companion to myself when I do things I love.

Another thing that can help is simply thinking about your ENTIRE ARC of life as a grander creative act: all the kids, the cats, the 9-5, the walk to and from work, the 3pm cuppa, the dinner, choosing your pj’s, watering the garden, being stuck in traffic… I know this can be quite a mental shift, but if you’re an artist (and we all are), then you’re an artist – it’s in every part of every thing you do.

I could talk about this topic for hours… I feel so strongly about it. I wish you every creative happiness. Xxx

13. When you listen to amazing music, what kind of physical sensations do you experience?

a. Have you ever been kissed by a really amazing pair of lips? It’s like that.

14. How many secrets do you have to tell in one boring cold winter?

a. Depends how cold the winter is.

15. Why don’t you make one very last performance in Adelaide with the Eva Cassidy Show? We would love that!

a. Good idea: maybe I will! Perhaps write to Bold jack and let them know you’re keen!

16. Are you moving overseas to live?

a. Probably not. We have spent quite some time in Berlin and Europe over the past three years, it’s true, but for now, while our children are still small and our family and community are all here, we belong in Australia. Funnily enough, I get fonder of it every year. Australia is, actually, pretty amazing. But you already knew this…

17. What is it like getting to be creative all the time?

a. Here’s the truth: I’m not, not in the traditional sense anyway. This week had seven days in it, and I spent six and a half of them struggling with administrative tasks, domestic-duties, training my new assistant, making and receiving phone-calls, memorizing a script, driving in traffic, and trying to complete this long letter to you. I would say that this week, I’ve spent a total of four hours being classically “creative”. Back to my answer before though: if I think about the entirety of life as a grander creative act, then “what is it like to be creative all the time” would be answered with “busy, but happy”.

18. Where do you feel most at home?

a. Forgive the obvious answer, but in my home is where I most feel at home. And you should know this: I live in a humble, rambling, un-renovated and un-glamorous yet partly delightful house just north of the city of Melbourne, with a big garden, lots of fruit trees and good neighbours. One day we will rip up all the metres of concrete, and replace the aluminium windows, and do all the things that every small family hopes to do when they buy their first house. We live near a creek and near a garden market. Best of all, it’s full of people I adore. AND, I like my bed. It is really really comfortable and I have never encourntered a better bed ever, not in any hotel or hostel or tipi.

19. Does becoming a politician interest you or would you fear becoming a Peter Garret?

a. My husband has been telling me for a long time that I was born for politics, and that this is my destiny, which really confuses me. I don’t see where I would fit. And besides, I travel enough as it is. Ask me again in ten years.

b. On the question of Peter Garret: I don’t fear being like Peter, because when it comes down to it (and I have thought about this quite a lot) I think Peter is a good man who works quite hard to make the world slightly better in small ways. I’m not saying I agree with everything he says, I’m just saying I think politics is a hard gig, and you wouldn’t do it unless you felt compelled to contribute in some way. A lot of the work that politicians do, however, is not considered news-worthy (in the same way that a parent’s good work is not considered news-worthy: it’s just people doing the right thing in a kind of a low-key private way). We only see the extremes – extremes does not a complete-story make.

c. What is worth fearing, is the way we forget that politicians are human beings, and the way THEY sometimes seem to forget they are human beings.

d. And again, why, oh why, would you bother becoming a politician and remaining a politician unless you genuinely thought you could make a positive influence somewhere? Why would you spend 140 nights a year away from your family, unless you were a genuinely intense person trying to change the world for the better? Yes, ego and power-hunger etc can play a role…perhaps that is worth considering… but overall, that’s not an easy job.

e. I will think more on this

20. When are you going to join the ALP’s front bench?

a. I thought we just spoke about that?

21. How did you get to be so gorgeous?

a. How did YOU get so gorgeous?

22. When and how did you learn the guitar? I want to learn!

a. I did not start teaching myself guitar or play it in public until I was 24 years old. Before that, I just plucked single strings in the privacy of my bedroom. At 24, however, I became obsessed with the guitar, and started sleeping with it in my bed, and playing it night and morning, and talking to it in my soft cooing voice. We are very close now.

23. What is the meaning of life? What in your opinion is our/your purpose?

a. This is not a question that will allow itself to be answered by a sentence alone: clearly, this is something that is felt, and it’s a different feeling for all of us. My advice would be to just sit still for a while every day, over lots of days, and I think you’ll know. Mainly, though, remember that there is an answer, even if you don’t know it quite yet.

b. Lately I’ve been wondering, like you, what my purpose is. I too struggle to articulate it, but I think it’s something to do with remembering happiness, and passing it on.

24. What is your favourite high school memory?

a. There are many, but one of them is the time I discovered a secret attic, and hid in there one lunch-time, making up stories in my head.

25. What does grace mean to you?

a. It means Jeff Buckley. You?

26. Could you be anymore brilliant, inspiring and entertaining?

a. Thank you! You = come again!

b. You are.

27. Do you have a cat or two?

a. This is really sad, but we don’t have any pets, because we are a traveling family. My wish for two years has been that we traveled less and could acquire two dogs, two chickens, two cats, one fat rabbit and seven guinie pigs. Instead, we have a garden full of fruit-trees and lots of native-bird visitors. We also have lots of cats who think our back-yard is their back-yard, but when I go to say hello, they run away.

28. Heard you speak five languages, what are they?

a. This is simply not true! I speak nine languages! When I’m drunk, I speak ten! I know, I know.

29. Where the hell did the inner Bogan come from?

a. Born this way.

30. Is Lanie Lane related to Dita Von Tease?

a. I think so, although I’ve never brought it up.

31. Do you sing any death metal?

a. Yes I do. Do you?

32. I listen to Radio National and my daughters say I’m a dag and boring. Is that true?

a. Your daughter’s will one day do the same, and suffer the same cruel jibes from their own children. Stand strong, little woman.

33. Did you hear me singing out of tune?

a. I did! It was lovely.

34. Where did your lovely butterflies come from on your dress?

a. Hmm, I think it was the Melbourne zoo? I can’t really remember…I’m sorry.

35. How do you do all these gigs with three young children? Where do you find the time to write songs with children? How do you do it all? *

a. I don’t do it all – let’s make that very clear, very very clear.

b. My children sometimes treat my song-writing like a new baby in the house: they love it, on the one hand, but they also want to poke it a bit, and they want to compete a little bit, and make sure you know that they were here first, and they are your favourite.

c. For this reason, I have lots of tricks to distract my children into letting me write a song.

i. One I occasionally use is called YELLING AT THEM to stop making so much BLOODY NOISE, I’ve got a HIT to write, don’t you kids want CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR FOR GOODNESS SAKES. (This worked the first time, but never since.)

ii. I hand them each three icy-poles and make them to go outside to eat it and then I secretly write a song and they’re none the wiser.

iii. I rely heavily on the Play School Golden Hour

iv. I don’t expect myself to have a clean house all the time

v. I live by the rule “It only takes two minutes to write a song. It doesn’t have to be good”. Not at the beginning anyway.

d. The children also have a father, who takes good care of them.

e. I also have a Mother who helps a lot

f. I also have a mother-in-law, her name is Jenny, and she helps too

g. We have a babysitter one night a week, and sometimes we use this time just to go out into the shed and play and record music.

h. The point being, I ask for help when I need it.

i. I do not expect myself to write good songs, I just write. This is how it begins.

j. I do what any working mother does: the best I can, in the hope that one day in a golden shower of light I will wake up and be extremely perfect. The older I get, the more I realize that there are better things in life than being perfect. You?

36. What is the best tip for songwriters?

a. Just write the fucking song.

37. Where you ever afraid to follow your heart and dreams?

a. Yes, very much so. That is why I released my first solo album at the age of 27, instead of 21.

38. When did you decide to mix your comedic side with your singing?

a. The same time I decided to have eyes with my face, and fingers with my hands. I can’t really remember…

39. After having an accident at work, which we won’t go into now, I was sent to a psychologist. This psychologist advised me that I was normal. Of course I was devastated. What am I to do?

a. Being told you’re “normal” can be quite shocking at first. Try not to take it personally – it’s quite common.

b. If you’re still in doubt, get a second opinion.

c. Try an art therapist –they’ll sort you out.

40. Is that really you on twitter on Q&A? Is that the only time you get to relax as your kids are in bed?

a. Do you mean the occasional tweets? Yes, that really is me!

b. Generally yes, that is my time to relax. I’m not a great relaxer though, to be honest: I like to “do” all the time. This is improving with age.

41. Do your children inspire your songwriting and do you think they will in the future?

a. Very much so – songs like “Lucky Life” especially.

b. To be honest, my children inspire my everything: not just the song writing, the whole “life” thing.

42. Do you find working on “702” creative?

a. I really enjoyed filling in for a week in Summer, yes. I had a great producer called Serpil, who took care of so many of the “nuts and bolts”, and allowed me to concentrate on the story-telling. I enjoyed it.

43. Do you get asked to play watch over me since the Aria performance and does it piss you off getting asked to play another persons songs?

a. I do occasionally get asked to play “Watch Over Me”, which is the song I sang with Bernard Fanning and Kasey Chambers at the 2006 ARIA awards. No, this does not piss me off, not at all. I don’t sing it though: it’s Bernard’s song.

44. Apart from your own songs, what do you think is the most beautiful song ever written?

a. The same one that is written and re-written every day: true. We don’t always get to hear it, but it’s quite possible that right this second, the greatest song ever written is being rewritten, even better.

45. Has Leonard Cohen inspired any new songs?

a. Yes, he most certainly has.

46. I am not musical – how do I encourage my daughters (6yrs) musical dreams?

a. There are lots of ways to do this. Sounds like she/they are already musically curious? Find them a good enthusiastic teacher, or a singing program

b. If there is no music program at your kid’s school, encourage them to contact The Song Room, to find out more about how to get a music teacher into your school.

c. Contact the Music Council of Australia for more tips on the above.

d. Remember that when you start paying some attention to your musicality (we all have it), you will inadvertently encourage your daughters to do the same. Go join a choir, play music in the house, protect them from awful music as much as you can, and dance a lot. This will encourage their musical dreams.

47. Where does your inspiration come from? Your own experiences? *

a. Much of it comes from just falling in love with things all the time – with new and old songs and with amazing friends and random things that make me feel happy and alive.

b. It can come from having my heart broken, which happens a lot too, just in little ways. The first Noble Truth, the one about suffering…that is true for all of us I think.

c. Yes, my own experiences, struggles, curiosities, joys – naturally, this propels me forward.

48. How are you so incredible talented and able to read into our hearts without even knowing our story? You have touched me deeply.

a. That is very kind – thank you so much for saying that. I don’t believe I am especially talented, but I have been loved, and I have been hurt, and I know these things deeply, and music gives us a chance to remember the things we share in common I guess.

49. Is there a secret to brewing the perfect cup of tea?

a. Here is the tea that is rocking my world each morning at the moment, which is a combination of tea-tricks inherited from my friends Rita, Kirsty and Danielle. I take 1tsp loose-leaf early grey, 1 tsp loose-leaf, two slices of ginger, pop it in a pot, put a tea cosy on it, let it brew for a good five minutes, and then when it’s lovely and dark, I pour it into a big mug and add some milk (nut, soy, cow, whatever you love the most) and then, oh my, I’m home.

50. Did you get it wrong very much before you got it right?

a. Why just this morning in fact! And every morning! Noon! After noon! Night! I am always playing around with getting it wrong before I get it right, and never feeling that I got it right anyway. Oh life!

51. What do you say if you walk into your 16yr olds bedroom and they are making out on the bed with their boy/girlfriend? Is it different reaction depending on whether it’s a boy or a girl?

a. Regardless of gender, I think my reaction would probably be a bit of the old “Dearie me! Oh! Dear! OH!” with a bit of a quick turn around/accidental bang-into-wall-type action. This, at least, is what MY Dad did when he walked in on me pashing my boyfriend when I was 16. It looked heaps worse than it was, Dad.

52. What books do you have on stage? Those ones, next to the teapots.

a. I believe it was Linda Goodman’s Love Signs! Curiously, this same book recently inspired the album “Love Signs” by the VERY amazing Monique Di Mattina. Whoah.

53. What is you favourite colour?

a. I love them all. Blue was very much my favourite colour as a child though. I DO love it. But yellows, reds, Frida Kahlo colours are what’s rocking my world this week!

54. If you were a farmyard animal, which would you be and why?

a. You know, I always really liked Wilbur from Charlotte’s web. Not just any pig, Wilbur the pig.

55. How did you and Fanny get so good at dancing?

a. Just luck.

“Eva is exceptional.” Chris Boyd, The Australian

On this note, we are DOUBLE super excited to announce, as a special Christmas gift to the CB Gang, generously discounted tickets ($10 off each ticket) if you use THIS LINK to make your purchase! This is a very limited two-week season only, so this offer is especially for you, to make sure you don’t miss out on tickets this time!

For those of you who want to know a bit more about the show, please read the below press-release. For everyone else, just scroll down to the bottom of the page for dates/times, and that Christmas link again!

Clare will write to you personally before Christmas.

CB CENTRAL xoxoxox

*  *  *

After a sell-out debut season in Melbourne in 2011, EVA returns by popular demand to the Athenaeum Theatre for a limited season only!

Eva Cassidy was born in 1963 and died 33 years later in 1996 leaving a legacy of extraordinary arrangements of ballads, sung with her hauntingly beautiful voice, described in the Washington Post as “…so pure, so strong and so passionate it should have found a home just about anywhere.”

And find a home it did! When the BBC played Somewhere Over The Rainbow four years after her death, Eva Cassidy’s records shot to the top of the charts and they are still selling to this day.

It is no wonder that one of Australia’s great talents, Clare Bowditch, should have heard this voice and was hooked immediately.

Tales from the Life of Eva Cassidy, co-written by Clare Bowditch and Jim Macpherson, is two hours of pure joy. Clare tells the story as only a fellow artist could – with passion and innate knowledge, sharing many of the same experiences.

Featuring Ashley Naylor and The Blues Alley Band, included in the song list is Fields Of Gold, Somewhere Over The Rainbow, Hallelujah I Love Him So and the Gospel hit, Wade In The Water

EVA- Tales From The Life Of Eva Cassidy SEASON

Tue, 7th Feb, Melbourne, VIC Athenaeum Theatre 8:00pm

BUY TICKETS Box office: 03 9650 1500

Wed, 8th Feb, Melbourne, VIC Athenaeum Theatre 8:00pm

BUY TICKETS Box office: 03 9650 1500

Thu, 9th Feb, Melbourne, VIC Athenaeum Theatre 8:00pm

BUY TICKETS Box office: 03 9650 1500

Fri, 10th Feb, Melbourne, VIC Athenaeum Theatre 8:00pm

BUY TICKETS Box office: 03 9650 1500

Sun, 12th Feb, Melbourne, VIC Athenaeum Theatre 5:00pm

BUY TICKETS Box office: 03 9650 1500

Tue, 14th Feb, Melbourne, VIC Athenaeum Theatre 8:00pm

BUY TICKETS Box office: 03 9650 1500

Wed, 15th Feb, Melbourne, VIC Athenaeum Theatre 8:00pm

BUY TICKETS Box office: 03 9650 1500

Thu, 16th Feb, Melbourne, VIC Athenaeum Theatre 8:00pm

BUY TICKETS Box office: 03 9650 1500

Fri, 17th Feb, Melbourne, VIC Athenaeum Theatre 8:00pm

BUY TICKETS Box office: 03 9650 1500

Sun, 19th Feb, Melbourne, VIC Athenaeum Theatre 8:00pm

BUY TICKETS Box office: 03 9650 1500